ADMIRAL PIETT

The promised rain clouds had developed into a torrential downpour in the middle of the night and the survivors of the crash did their best to seek shelter under the enormous canopy of trees near the lake. They settled in high enough out of the way to not awaken to find their campsite underwater come the morning, but still within sight of the lake to easily see any aircraft that may be scouring the area for them. Two guards were posted in a rotation while the rest of them attempted to find some sleep but in sopping wet clothes that were not drying in the humidity and no supplies to make the night more bearable, no one slept much, though none so terribly as the four officers who were the reason the shuttle had been shot down.

The other passengers had just been caught in the crossfire, unlucky bystanders to the bigger issue. If Lord Vader had ordered the shuttle be shot down to deal with Piett, Jerjerrod, Motti, and Needa all in one fell swoop, he would have no qualms about killing another two dozen men in the process. Those men, however, did not know that they meant so little to the Empire. It was a difficult choice to make in withholding that information or not, for if those men discovered that their senior officers were wanted for treason, they might turn on them, take them captive, and escort them back into Imperial hands where they would surely be handed over to Lord Vader. If they remained oblivious to the cause of the crash, they would question why no help was coming for them, and that was assuming that no recovery team was sent to finish the job. They might even be dispatched purely to keep them quiet if a squad happened to locate them by their distress beacon.

Regardless, Piett and the other three officers would have to keep moving and put as much distance between themselves and the crash as possible and they could not very well tell the other survivors to split from them. If Lord Vader assumed they were dead, that bought them some time, but if the Sith had men come to search the crash to confirm a body count and found most of the bodies missing, hunting parties would be out in droves, making Piett and the others fugitives.

There was no way to get off this moon and no way to leave the other men behind, but not separating from those survivors heightened their chances of one of those men figuring out what had happened and staging a coup.

Having to deal with all of this on top of the very real fact that Piett had gone from a nameless, faceless servant of the Empire to Fleet Admiral and now to a traitor all within just a few short years, Piett was having a difficult time coming to grips with how his life had so drastically changed overnight.

Apparently, he was not as valuable as he had believed himself to be, for Lord Vader would have known he was on that shuttle and had had it shot down all the same. It had to have been on instinct rather than evidence. If Jerjerrod had presented his independent thought from the influence of the Empire, he could not be convinced to use his newfound abilities in the Empire's name, and so he was no longer useful, but dangerous. Attempting to kill Piett, Motti, and Needa at the same time was just collateral, considering that Lord Vader likely assumed that the three of them now knew of Jerjerrod's abilities and would attempt to help him escape. Lord Vader detested Motti, but had no reason to want Piett and Needa dead other than that they were close friends of two men he wanted dead.

It did not sit well with Piett that his promising career and promotion as well as his expectations to be commended for his part in the rebels' eventual downfall all were flushed down the privy because he had had the misfortune to share a shuttle with Jerjerrod. If the bridge had not been destroyed and landing craft had had a wider space to receive their human cargo, Piett would have taken a separate shuttle back to the Executor, but instead he had been forced to get on the ship with Jerjerrod and so he was deemed expendable.

He was confident in his ability to lie to Lord Vader, as he had done before (though not without some inward trembling and bated breath to see if the Sith bought his lie), and he had thought that there would be nothing more to it than stepping off the shuttle aboard the Death Star and acting surprised when Jerjerrod and Motti were reported missing. He had prepared his lie, spent about an hour relaxing his face in front of his reflective screen in his quarters, and had already grieved the loss of two more friends as he considered that he was about to lose communication with them for the foreseeable future and maybe forever if they were discovered or if he was caught in a lie.

All things considered, he thought he had handled himself admirably and done the very best he could with the information that was given to him. Losing a good friend and being told that another had the makings of a Sith was more than most men could handle, and yet Piett had had to do that because it was expected of him by his men, his peers, his friends, and himself. He could not break, no matter how desperately he wanted to.

As he saw the explosives blasting dozens of men into the sky and incinerating many more, he had looked for Veers among them in some horrific fascination. If he had seen his friend's body cease to exist, he might very well have lost his mind, but he had seen enough of other men dying in front of him to be sick to his stomach in the several minutes after. Somehow, he had staggered back to the control room to find Jerjerrod making his report to Lord Vader and despite how composed and unbothered Jerjerrod had initially seemed, Piett noted his tense posture, the ever so subtle shaking in his leg, and the self-reassuring running of his thumb over his finger at his side, all signs of duress, all things Piett had done himself in Lord Vader's presence.

He had only thought to offer Jerjerrod some comforting words since he knew his friend had been the one to have to make that call to cut the rebels off, but when he had found Jerjerrod suffocating in his quarters, he knew something far worse had plagued the commander. That something was indeed far worse than Piett could have anticipated, and he had had to do some quick thinking to come to terms with what Jerjerrod was telling him all while withholding the nagging feeling that he ought to be wisely cautious of this discovery.

Nothing had changed in that Jerjerrod appeared to be the same man he had been moments before, but where before there had been absolute trust, seeds of doubt had now been sown in because Piett knew that Jerjerrod was not solely human and not oblivious to the goings-on around him. Jerjerrod could sense things, feel things that had once been private but were now easily accessible, and Piett did not care for someone else to go poking about in his thoughts. Lord Vader could do that easily enough if he cared to, but the Sith had more pressing matters than to sift through Piett's emotions and memories.

It was this fact that made Piett struggle to not resent Jerjerrod for landing him in this situation. He knew Jerjerrod could not help what he was and that he had not asked to have any dealings with the Force and furthermore, he hated the idea of being similar to the Sith. He knew Jerjerrod saw his newfound abilities and identity as a betrayal to the rest of the officers who had seen comrades killed at Lord Vader's hand, but the fact remained that Piett was in this predicament because of his affiliation with Jerjerrod.

Lord Vader did not trust that Jerjerrod would not go rogue, rise up against him and the Emperor, and become stronger than the two of them and so rather than risk the very slim possibility of that happening, he had decided to have Jerjerrod's own men turn on him and kill him and everyone else aboard the shuttle. No loose ends to tie up, or so the Sith had hoped.

Everything Piett had worked for, all of his careful planning in not drawing the ire of the Sith and just living to the age of retirement without incurring the Sith's wrath, it was all for naught because he had picked the wrong transport. And now that he was a part of the team that had survived and chosen to ally himself with Jerjerrod purely for survival, he would be considered a traitor despite not having done anything treacherous. He had been shot down, survived, and was staying with those who also had walked away from the crash, and his only crime was to be alive when assumed dead. If he was captured alive at this point, he would face an excruciating death by Lord Vader's hands, and seeing as how the Sith's predilection for crushing windpipes was something Piett had both seen in person and heard described, he would rather blast his own brains out.

But he could see no other fate for himself if he did not find some way off of this moon. He could only think of locating a rebel ship and either sneaking aboard or commandeering it somehow with his limited knowledge of flying. The other option was to live out the rest of his days in this tree-infested wilderness and he did not like his chances. He had lived in space for too long to have any confidence in himself when it came to roughing it in a place with no technology.

It came as no surprise to him that at first light, he had not slept one second due to all of those perilous thoughts bouncing around in his head all night and the irrepressible chill he had endured due to his waterlogged clothes. He and the other officers held a brief discussion on the plan for the day.

"We should be moving," Jerjerrod advised. "Not that it will do us much good if they scan for lifeforms, but if anyone is out searching for us on foot, the rain will cover our trail at least. Our main priority is to find some form of transport; everything else is secondary."

That much was true since they had plenty of water at their disposal but nothing with which to catch and carry it so that they would have to drink their fill while the rainfall continued. Shelter was pointless if they had to constantly be on the move. Food would be hard to come by unless they managed to hunt and shoot something and with the noise twenty-odd men would be making, they would be sure to scare off any game and none of them knew enough about the local vegetation to risk safely eating any. Rescue was not on the minds of Piett and the other three officers even though the rest of the men were hoping for it.

With no way of knowing where they had been shot down and in which direction they should start walking to avoid the Imperial bunker, they set off on an uphill climb after drinking some water from the dripping leaves all around them. The rain was not letting up and as a result, they all remained in their soggy clothes that smelled strongly of fish.

He did not miss the looks the other officers were giving him and how everyone seemed to be observing him as if expecting him to suddenly exhibit some rabid signs. He had been checked over thoroughly for bites and did not feel or find any marks, but he knew that the others wanted to err on the side of caution. Still, he could not ignore how some of the troopers were clutching their weapons tightly to their chests in anticipation of some hostile act from him.

He kept silent as they trudged on through the morning, switching between keeping his eyes on the ground in front of him to not trip over exposed roots and the back of Needa's neck as the captain walked in front of him. Though he had not spoken much to Needa since the crash, it was not from anger that Needa had almost unintentionally killed him last night. Despite his instructions and warnings on how to swim for those who were inexperienced, Needa had dissolved into panic after suffering from claustrophobia in the bowels of the sinking ship.

When everyone else had exited the windscreen, Needa had found an air pocket further back in the cockpit and retreated into it rather than risk attempting to swim. It was here that Piett had found him hyperventilating and had to spend several precious moments trying to calm him enough to follow orders as the ship continued to sink. Instructing Needa to hold onto his uniform, Piett had guided him out of the ship and upon reaching the surface, Needa had swallowed too much water and desperately tried to push Piett underneath him to provide more buoyancy for his body. Had Jerjerrod not arrived shortly thereafter, Piett's last moments would have been fighting for air just below the surface with nothing but the distorted image of Needa above him.

Needa had attempted to profusely apologize once they had reached land and concluded that Piett had not been bitten by the water serpent, but Piett did not want to hear any sort of apology. He could not hold it against Needa for being so completely out of his element, but he was irked at the situation in how he was simply not capable of defending himself. His experience in water amounted to nothing when another man was trying to drown him, much the same as his situation now where his experience as Fleet Admiral meant nothing in a wilderness where no civilization existed.

That vast wilderness had its first clearing some hours later around midday when they came upon the base of a cliffside and Piett wondered if scaling the cliff was worth it just to gain a vantage point. They had no idea which direction they were going or how far they were from the bunker or if they were walking toward it or further away. In some small way, the rebel attack on the bunker was a blessing, for it had recalled all troops and those now left stranded from rejoining the base were likely all gathered together to form one solid force against the rebels or they were scattered. Either way, they would not have the equipment or the means of communication to know that Piett and the others had been shot down, so they would not know to look for them.

Climbing the cliff would offer them the only bit of direction they had and they would be able to spot the shield generator up to a hundred miles away. The only issue was that they could not safely make the ascent without proper gear and so they would have to go around to walk up the incline rather than go straight up, and the latter might take days.

Shielding his eyes from the rain, Motti was observing the cliff with obviously the same thoughts when they heard screeching from high above. Miniscule shapes were falling away from the top of the cliffs and Piett gave a warning to retreat further back to avoid what might be boulders cascading down on them, but upon closer inspection, he saw that the shapes were not at all boulder-like. In fact, as they toppled down toward the forest floor, Piett could see distinct body shapes and then large arms that might even be wings.

After a few more seconds, he could confirm that whatever these creatures were, they did in fact have wings and several of these winged creatures in the same shade of green as the surrounding trees swooped down on them. When lengthened, their wingspan showed bright red interior sinew. Spiraling down and shrieking their arrival, the beasts clawed out at them in an attempt to snatch up whatever they made contact with.

"Scatter and shoot!" cried a lower-ranking officer.

"No, stick close!" countered Piett, though his voice was not nearly deep or loud enough to be heard or heeded. If they scattered, it would be easier for the beasts to pick them off one by one. Forming together presented less of a target, if only Piett could convince the terrified troopers to do so.

"Form up, face outward and upward!" bellowed Jerjerrod in a much deeper voice than Piett had ever heard from him. If he didn't know any better, he would have said that Jerjerrod sounded a mite too much like Veers with a commanding tone only an experienced battlefield general could perfect. In any case, the men flocked to this authoritative voice like it was a lifeline and formed a circle around the officers, pressing in together until their elbows were knocking against each other. "If you have a shot, take it!"

With his SE-14r light repeating blaster in hand and feeling quite useless, Piett saw the troopers firing around him, but none of their shots seemed to be making contact and not for the first time, he had to wonder if the Empire's quality in training for accuracy was sacrificed in favor of quantity of troopers.

"What are they?" Piett asked no one in particular, but was surprised when Motti answered, "Condor dragons," in a tone that suggested that he was most unhappy with that fact.

Piett neither knew nor cared what condor dragons were, but he assumed the worst of them and clutched his blaster in both hands, if only to stop them trembling. He ducked and saw one of the dragons swoop low enough to pass between two troopers and knock both over with its wings. The troopers around the fallen two stepped away to avoid the dragon's thrashing tail, creating an opening for the dragon to latch onto not only something, but someone. Its tail coiled around Jerjerrod's leg and with an almighty tug, yanked him off of his feet, dragging him through the grass while trying to lift him. Needa attempted to shoot the dragon down, but his blaster seemed to rebound off of its skin and Piett hastily concluded that it was armored.

Motti–who seemed to now favor the riot baton he had used in the scuffle with the rebels–had the baton in hand, fully activated, and as the dragon struggled to hoist Jerjerrod skyward, he ran up alongside it and brought the energized side of the baton down over the dragon's tail. The electrical shock would have laid a man flat, but the dragon only recoiled slightly, allowing Motti to strike the tail twice more until it released Jerjerrod's leg.

Not to be deterred, the dragon made a dive straight back for Jerjerrod, but Motti threw himself flat over the commander and the dragon's talons just raked along his back, opening one or two cuts along the way. It instead snatched up an unsuspecting trooper, looped its tail around the trooper's neck, and inside of ten seconds, had flown too far out of reach for any of them to do anything. All they could do was listen to the man screaming as he was taken away to be feasted upon.

Piett didn't want to count how many men they had lost from their already dwindling number, but he knew they needed to gain control of the situation somehow. If the beasts could not be so easily killed with a direct shot to their bodies due to protective skin, they had to aim for weaker areas. On the verge of relaying the suggestion, Piett heard a screech and saw the dragon dive-bombing him. With only seconds to react, Piett let himself fall backward into the grass, bringing his blaster up level with his face as he did. The dragon pinned him with its body weight as it barreled into him and it drove the breath from his lungs.

Winded and with pain shooting up his back from how he had fallen, Piett shoved his blaster barrel into the dragon's open maw and fired three times. The inside of the throat, it seemed, was not impenetrable, and the dragon let out a garbled cry before falling over dead with Piett held down under its body.

At the sound of one of their own dying, the other dragons took flight in a hasty retreat. Apparently, they had never met an enemy that could fight back before and were in no great haste to test their luck. Only two dragons remained, but they were evidently the fiercest and largest of the brood and even with troopers firing rapidly at them, the blaster beams glanced harmlessly off of their scales.

The larger of the two remaining dragons threw itself forward into the scattered group of survivors and latched onto whatever it could with its talons. Piett saw it make contact with something and then begin to flap its wings madly to lift away its catch. Needa was rising five, ten feet in the air, trapped crucifixion style with his arms wrapped in the dragon's claws. He kicked wildly and hollered in fright, but for all his wriggling, the dragon seemed to not even notice that its prey was putting up a fight.

"Open fire!" shouted a trooper, but Jerjerrod's voice drowned out the command in urgent protest.

"You'll hit the captain! One shot only from a rifle."

"Aim for its eyes!" Piett managed to holler with hardly any breath from still having the condor's crushing weight on his chest.

The remaining trooper who had a blaster rifle set his sights along the scope, marked his target, and shot the dragon through its nostril where the beam of energy passed through its eye and then its head. As the brain disintegrated, the dragon's wings collapsed and it plummeted straight down with Needa beneath it. Landing in a crumpled heap with half of the dragon on top of him, Needa was still trapped in the death grip the claws had him in.

As three troopers pushed the body off of Piett, four more were doing the same for Needa while Motti, who had gotten to Needa first, was wrenching the talons open. In the end, he had to break the bones in each claw to free Needa and pull him away from the carcass of the thing that would have eaten him. Glancing down at the dragon with a mixture of anger and terror, Needa wiped dirt from his uniform as if ridding himself of the feel of the creature's hold on him.

Slowly approaching Needa and nursing what felt like bruised ribs, Piett asked urgently, "Did it bite you?"

"I don't think so," gasped Needa, patting himself over and looking for marks or tears in his uniform.

"Are you certain?"

"As certain as you are that you weren't bitten last night," answered Needa a bit testily.

"Considering that you almost drowned me and likely brought that serpent down on me as a result, I would appreciate less of the carping attitude, Captain."

Not altogether reassured, Piett insisted that Needa remove his uniform to check him for bites since he had had to undergo the same indecency the night prior. True to the captain's word, however, there were no bites on him, which Piett counted as extremely lucky to the point of being alarming, for there was no way both of them could have escaped their deadly encounters unscathed.

"You didn't feel anything at all when it grabbed you?" Piett questioned.

"Only that it had a tight grip on my arms. I felt nothing else," Needa insisted. "Should there be cause for alarm?"

"Not if you weren't bitten," said Motti.

"What if its claws opened up a cut or two in you?" asked Piett with a gesture at the rips along Motti's back.

"Assuming the cuts can be cleaned out, I would say that there is nothing to worry about," said Motti, though he did not sound altogether reassured by his own words.

Three men had been killed in the attack. Two were carried off and one had been half-eaten when one of the dragons attempted to drag him away but gave up midway into its journey and instead began to feast on the man's neck. Piett did not know their names, nor the names of those men who had gone down with the shuttle, but he did want to hold some sort of vigil for them at the first opportunity. He knew soldiers were killed every minute across the galaxy and that most of them had no families to report their death to, and so they would die nameless, but since Piett no longer could admit to serving the Empire, he was not bound to follow its rules and he was determined to find out who these men had been and what's more, to give a damn now that they were dead.

As evening set in and they all had only eaten a handful each of some berries that a trooper had positively identified as non-poisonous, they found a place where the trees bowed inward, creating an untouched forest floor where the rain could not reach them for the first time since the storm had started that morning. Still cold, still miserable, still hungry and hurting, they decided this was as good of a place as any to bed down for the night.

"If this damnable rain would just stop…" said Motti wistfully.

"At least the ground here is somewhat dry," said Piett. He would take any respite from the rain that he could, even if he had to sit on damp earth. "Have a seat, Admiral, and I'll tend to those cuts on your back."

"With what?" asked Motti.

"With what we have," answered Piett simply.

He was not the only one to have grabbed whatever he could from the cockpit that would not weigh him down in the water and though it hardly seemed worth it, he had taken the emergency medical kit that had a few dressings and salves in it.

Shivering in the rain despite the lukewarm temperature, Motti removed the upper part of his uniform and turned his back to Piett who could see bumps forming underneath Motti's skin across his broad shoulders. The two lacerations left by the dragon's claws were not deep, but deep enough that they needed to be properly dressed or he ran the risk of infection. Piett was quick to apply ointment, then a wrapping, and have Motti redress.

"This trip to Endor is amounting to a fine collection of scars on my part," said Motti ruefully.

"The bacta treatment healed most of those. Another session should clear up the rest of the wounds."

"I'll be sure to take full advantage of the next bacta tank I see."

Shooting Motti a reprimanding look for his pessimism, Piett sent him off to find sleep as best he could while he took first watch. He was severely regretting volunteering for first watch since he wanted nothing more than to sleep after such a taxing day already running off of no sleep, but he told himself that it would make it that much more worth it when he finally was able to sleep in two hours' time.

He came dangerously close to nodding off several times and only by slapping himself hard across the cheek was he able to stay awake. He did not have enough room in his head for any other thoughts than the ones he'd been mulling over all day and he did not have the strength to think any further about the ones already there.

Not often, if ever, did Piett engage in what he might call selfish acts, but he simply could not keep his eyes open any longer and rather than risk falling asleep on duty, he decided to cut his watch short and offer to do the last shift of the night as compensation. Stifling a yawn, he stumbled over his own feet to where Needa was asleep with his back turned toward Piett. Somewhat envious that the captain had managed to fall asleep so quickly and stay that way, Piett could only hope for the same and was looking forward to curling up on the moss-strewn ground and using his own arm as a pillow. Nothing had ever sounded so luxurious.

Piett placed his hand on Needa's shoulder to silently wake him for his watch. In a split second, he saw foaming saliva flying and the bulging, purplish-bloodshot eyes of Needa staring at him as the captain clawed at his face. Disoriented from fatigue, Piett had a slower than normal reaction time and took an ungainly step backward. Had Needa not had his gloves on, his nails would have raked straight down Piett's cheek and opened several deep gouges. Fastening his hands around Needa's wrists as the only way he could keep Needa from attempting to throttle him, Piett knew something had gone horribly wrong, but had no time to think of what or how. Needa seemed incapable of speaking, instead gnashing his teeth, spitting, and choking out guttural animalistic noises.

Screaming at Needa to stop, Piett quickly began losing another fight against the larger man. Needa was simply too strong for Piett to battle one-on-one.

"Firmus, let go of him!" he heard Jerjerrod call, but he couldn't release his hold on Needa, or his friend would surely gouge out his eyes or rip open his throat or perhaps bite his jugular. Needa was gone in this moment, and Piett had no way to get to him, to make him see reason.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Motti standing in fixated horror just a few feet away, but Motti didn't move to assist him.

"Let him go now!"

Piett released his hold on Needa's wrists and as he fell backward, he shoved Needa away from him. Jerjerrod seized the back of Needa's uniform and hauled him bodily away, throwing him down in the middle of a circle of troopers that had formed and stepping in front of Piett to shield him from further attack with his blaster drawn and pointed at Needa's head. Needa was back on his feet, eyes nearly popping out of their sockets and leaking blood through his tear ducts, mouth dripping a yellowish liquid. He lunged and Jerjerrod intercepted him, using his shoulder to ram Needa in the chest and send him sprawling again.

"Captain, if you can understand me, lie down on your stomach now and put your hands on your head."

Needa scrambled to his feet, glancing wildly around him at the several blasters trained on him as if searching for an escape. Piett stood up as well, pleading with Needa to come to his senses as he stepped out from behind Jerjerrod.

"Captain, we are trying to help you. Stop resisting and do as commanded."

"Captain Needa, lie down now and assume the position of surrender," Jerjerrod repeated.

A pained, garbled choke came from Needa's throat and he expelled blood from his mouth. A half-second glance at Jerjerrod confirmed what both of them feared. Needa was suffering and nothing either of them said could reach him now.

"This is your final warning, Captain!" shouted an ensign.

The swelling eyes locked onto Piett and Needa let out a snarl as he lunged once again.

Jerjerrod's blaster put a hole through Needa's forehead with just centimeters to spare between Needa and Piett and the captain crumpled on the spot.

The stunned silence in the aftermath was punctured only by the ringing in Piett's ears as he saw a puddle of blood begin to pool out from the exit wound in Needa's head. He was not processing that what had not even ten minutes ago been his living, breathing, seemingly normal friend was now lifeless and gone on the forest floor.

He needed to do something with his hands and whether or not it was a conscious move, he felt one grasp the handle of his blaster and saw Motti do the same, thought he knew for entirely different reasons. He needed something to hold onto, but Motti had just witnessed Jerjerrod commit another friend to nothing more than memory and if he had not been told yet, he would definitely have felt that raw power residing in Jerjerrod.

Piett had dropped to his knees as soon as Jerjerrod had fired the shot and now extended a trembling hand to likely feel for a pulse as if there was any hope at all that Needa was still alive.

"Don't touch him," said Jerjerrod sharply to which Piett withdrew his hand as if he had been electrocuted. "No one touch him. Burn his body where it fell."

"Burn?" repeated Piett in a small voice.

"He contracted something to put him in that maddened state. Direct contact with him could transfer the infection. It's safest to burn his body."

Piett noted how cold Jerjerrod's delivery was, how disinterested he seemed in the fact that this man that they both had known for more than half of their lives was gone and that Jerjerrod had been the one to kill him. Though Piett understood that what Jerjerrod had done was an act of mercy, as Needa had clearly been in agony, he could see that Motti was struggling to come to grips with it and that it was taking an enormous effort on his part. He had not failed to notice that Jerjerrod was adapting that calculating, expressionless demeanor that Veers alone had been able to accomplish when it came to delivering or carrying out such horrible tasks. If not for the fact that he was a wanted man, Jerjerrod would now have been revered as the perfect Imperial soldier, well on his way to gaining the same notoriety that Veers had.

The Sith would have been so proud.

Two soldiers came forward with incineration devices. Piett held out a hand to stop them and worked Needa's squares free with the other, turning his glove inside out to act as a makeshift pouch for safekeeping which he then placed in his trousers pocket. Given that they did not know to what extent the rest of Needa's body or uniform were contagious, it was the only thing that could be salvaged, the only memory of him they could retrieve.

Once Piett had taken the squares, the troopers prodded at Needa's body a time or two until his uniform caught fire. The flames began to trickle up and down his sleeve, spreading across his chest to engulf his still wide-eyed and desperately maddened expression. Piett had to look away for a moment, disgusted with himself for relishing the warmth coming from the fire that now fed upon Needa's body, for it was the first time he had been able to keep out the chill in nearly twenty-four hours. The smell, though, was enough to make Piett gag, as it was the stench of charred flesh.

He saw Motti could not avert his gaze as he watched the fire set into Needa's skin and turn a milky pale white color to red, then gray, and finally black as it smoldered into ash. Covering his mouth with his bare hand to hold in the vomit that was building at the back of his throat, Piett looked now to Jerjerrod, though the sight made him feel, if possible, worse.

Across from him, Jerjerrod was also watching, though with far less of anything remotely resembling feeling on his face. Unlike Piett who had finally broken and exhibited undeniable loss, Jerjerrod might as well have been reading a progress report. It was not the same man who had shown a wide array of emotions when confiding in Piett in private or the man who had killed the rebel or even the man who had given the order to blow the bridge. That man, Piett at least had been able to read to some extent. That man, Piett knew.

This man was someone else, and as desperately as he wanted to trust that this man before him was still Tiaan Jerjerrod, he had his doubts that it was entirely him. The longer Jerjerrod went on under the influence of the Force, the less he resembled the man he had once been, the less Piett recognized him. Piett could relate to Jerjerrod's struggles, his rigidness for the rules, his dedication to being the exact sort of officer the Empire needed but now Jerjerrod was becoming that sort of officer without trying, able to end a man's life as if it had meant nothing to him.

While Piett knew that was not true, he could not see inside Jerjerrod as Jerjerrod could see inside him, and so he knew nothing about any inner turmoil Jerjerrod might be feeling over ending the lives of two of his friends in two days.

Needa's body had crumbled to ash and dust by the time Piett managed to open his fingers across his mouth to ask, "Was...was there any chance for him?" He knew the answer, but some part of him wanted to believe that they might have been able to spare Needa from whatever had happened to him, though the thought would likely make him physically ill if he knew that there had been a chance and that they had killed him too soon.

"Not at the stage he was in," said Jerjerrod. "If we had caught it from the beginning, if we could have transported him to a proper medical unit, perhaps something might have been done for him, but he kept his injury a secret and endangered us all."

"I don't think he knew," said Motti.

"I find that hard to believe that a man could walk around for the better part of a full day and not know-"

"The venom in condor dragons' bites is slow-acting but one hundred percent fatal. Lorth was affected by the venom which shows no symptoms to the point of being untraceable because it leaves no mark. Anyone bitten can walk around for hours in obliviousness before complete takeover but the venom causes the victim's mental capacity to deteriorate first. Essentially, his brain swelled with the venom and he was unable to process any logical thought. His heart was beating at an accelerated rate when he attacked and would have given out on him within the next minute or so if you hadn't shot him. There was no way for any of us to know he had been bitten, including himself."

Jerjerrod appeared mildly impressed but asked, "And you know all this because-?"

"I wasn't about to land on a moon with thousands of species and not do in-depth research on the predators. Even if I had suspected Lorth had been bitten, we don't have the equipment here to check for any abnormalities, so we wouldn't have been able to tell until he tried to attack us. For that, I do fault myself for not insisting that a guard be set up around him after that condor attack."

"Did you happen to do any research into side effects of those who have had close interaction with victims?"

It was an indirect way of asking if they now needed to worry about Piett carrying the infection, perhaps from a cut or flying saliva or sweat.

"If any instances have occurred, they weren't recorded," said Motti carefully.

Piett hung his head for a moment, then handed over his blaster to Jerjerrod without being asked to relinquish it and lifted his wrists to be clapped in binders as a precaution. "I suppose we'll know in about eight hours if I'll be needing that back."

Now was not the time to show weakness in front of the men, which included concern for his fellow officer and so Jerjerrod-damnably efficient and professional man that he was-ordered a four-man guard be set up around Piett for the remainder of the night but upon reflection, deemed that binding Piett to the thick interwoven and exposed roots of the gargantuan trees would suffice since they all needed to be ready to travel at first light.

"If there is an infection, it will likely start with a fever in a few hours' time," Jerjerrod told Piett as he inspected the binders. "If by then you've not shown any signs, we can assume that you are not infected. I am sorry for the uncomfortable position you must sleep in tonight."

"Precautions must be taken, Commander," said Piett with more bite to his words than he intended for the infuriating and misplaced resentment he felt toward his friend just now. However, as Piett suspected, Jerjerrod read his emotions and his brow knit together for half a second in resignation.

"I am sorry," he repeated.

"It had to be done. He was already gone. He went to sleep and never woke up and that thing that attacked me wasn't him. I couldn't have shot him myself."

"Had it been anyone else, you could have," said Jerjerrod stoutly.

Piett had to think quickly on what Jerjerrod meant by that before he said something he would regret in coming to the wrong conclusion. At first, he thought Jerjerrod meant that Piett cared less for any other man than he did for Needa, and so it would not have been difficult to kill any other man. He thought Jerjerrod was calling out his cowardice but what the commander was implying was that Piett could not kill Needa because Piett was the one in danger. If Needa had gone after someone else, Piett would have found the courage needed to draw his blaster and shoot Needa down himself, but since Needa had gone after him, he had made a connection with Piett in his final moments and even if it meant mercy, Piett could not be the one to end his life.

Men were capable of making the most awful, heart-wrenching decisions when pushed to their limits and Jerjerrod had had to choose Piett or Needa, his friend or the rabid, crazed animal that could no longer be reasoned with. Another decision that damned him either way, another action that set him apart from Piett and Motti, another example of how the Force was changing him.

Taking over what was supposed to be Needa's watch, Jerjerrod went to the far side of the circle and sat down with his blaster in hand, facing half toward the inside of the circle and half out into the darkness.

For a time, Piett tried to find the least uncomfortable position to settle in but was aware of someone's eyes on him and finally lifted his head to confront Motti. "I can't sleep with you staring at me like that," he said, somewhat perturbed.

"Technically speaking, I'm staring but not seeing," Motti returned with eyes that did indeed seem distant and unfocused.

"Don't think about it," said Piett knowingly.

"Explain to me how I shouldn't think about it when his ashes are sitting just twenty feet away. Explain to me how you can be so calm about this when he attacked you and when you knew him better than any of us."

"Because I've grieved in the time given to me and now I must set an example of the type of man I am, whether I am proud of it or not. I can't shed the image I've been forced to make for myself in being this obedient clone who does not show emotion for his fellow fallen soldiers. It was a constant battle every day to not react to things in a way that was unbecoming of an admiral in the Imperial Fleet, and now that I am likely no longer a part of that fleet, I can't suddenly allow myself to express what I am feeling because there are still men looking to me for leadership. They may not know I am a traitor and no longer in command, but they still recognize me as someone whose duty it is to see them to safety."

"I think you're allotted more time than a few minutes to grieve in a crisis. You're allowed to be human now that you no longer serve the Empire."

"They don't know that," said Piett with a jerk of his head toward the rest of their party. "As far as they're concerned, I am still Fleet Admiral, you are still Supervising Admiral and Secondary Architect, and Tiaan is a commander with the rank of moff in everything apart from name."

"I don't think any of them doubted for a second that he's not still in charge," said Motti darkly and Piett noted the shadow that fell over his face at the mention of Jerjerrod. It wounded him to see the distrust there on behalf of their friend, but had he not moments ago felt that same distrust? The only difference was that he knew why he now had doubts about Jerjerrod and Motti didn't. Motti didn't understand why Jerjerrod was now capable of doing the things he had done when before, it would not have even been considered to be a part of his character.

"Don't be so quick to judge him however you're choosing to judge him in your own private thoughts," said Piett knowingly. "He is still acting the part of the senior officer because he is able. He has greater mental endurance to deal with these sorts of situations than you or I could ever hope to have. That's why he took the shot and why he blew the bridge. And why he's keeping watch on me from the other side of camp. He knows he can and that he might have to and that you can't. And before you say anything, that isn't an insult. It's no sting to your pride to admit that you don't have what it takes to kill another officer, for whatever reason, but you proved to him that you can't. You got to me first and you froze because that was your friend and you couldn't bring yourself to kill him, even to save me. I don't blame you for that and I hope you don't blame yourself. I could not have killed him either in that moment, but if he had gone after you or the commander, I would have had no choice."

"That seems to be a recurring theme lately in not having a choice or having to choose the lesser of two evils," said Motti, though he sounded for the first time in Piett's memory, noticeably saddened by that fact. It was a mark of how dire their situation was that Motti–who had been closest to Veers in the running for carrying out his duties so emotionlessly–could demonstrate that he did understand sadness and had not had all emotions besides anger stamped out of him.

"That is what leadership is and why leaders are ostracized," said Piett with a sigh. "You can never please everyone with the decisions you make and someone will always resent you for what you choose. Be grateful that you've not had to make any of those decisions, Admiral. Be ever grateful."